Family values vs. God

A moving story in today's Washington Post:

Michael Shackelford slides under his 1988 Chevy Cheyenne. Ratchet in hand, he peers into the truck's dark cavern, tapping his boot to Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings" drifting from the garage.

Flat on his back, staring into the cylinders and bearings, Michael fixes his truck like he wishes he could fix himself.

"I wake up and I try so hard to look at a girl," he says. "I tell myself I'm gonna be different. It doesn't work."

Michael is 17 and gay, though his mother still cries and asks, "Are you sure?" He's pretty sure. It's just that he doesn't exactly know how to be gay in rural Oklahoma. He bought some Cher CDs. He tried a body spray from Wal-Mart called Bod. He drove 22 miles to the Barnes & Noble in Tulsa, where the gay books are discreetly kept in the back of the store on a shelf labeled "Sociology."

While the rest of the country is debating same-sex marriage, Michael's America is still dealing with the basics. There are no rainbow flags here. No openly gay teacher at the high school. There is just the wind knifing down the plains, and people praying over their lunches in the yellow booths at Subway. Michael loves this place, but can it still be home? What if the preachers and the country music songs are right?

"Being gay, you'll never have that true love like a man and a woman," Michael says, standing against his truck as Merle Haggard mixes with the backyard whippoorwills. "Hearing all the songs about a man coming home from work to his wife's loving arms, you never hear of gay couples like that."

He sets his ratchet down. "Do you?"

One of the most heartbreaking parts of this story is how Christian doctrine is destroying Michael's mother's relationship with her son. He doesn't drink or smoke. He goes to school and holds a job. He has a sincere, kind personality and is polite to everybody. He's clearly a great kid.

And still she thinks he's a failure, headed to hell. Instead of being filled with pride for him, she has wept for him since she first found out he was gay.

Janice feared that Michael would go to hell and be apart from her in the afterlife. "I'm afraid I won't see him again," she says, her voice breaking.

Not all of the evils in the world are the fault of Christianity, but it bears a large responsibility for this one. If Tulsa's churches were preaching that gays and lesbians deserved acceptance instead of condemnation, Michael's mother would have been able simply to love him.

Instead, her religion has forced her to choose between her son and God.

The Post series is going to be continued. I'm hoping against hope that Michael's mother is going to reject her religion's intolerance.

(See the photo gallery, too.)